Oct 7th
We walked back to Liberty Park this morning and purchased tickets for the ferry that goes to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. The ferry stops at Ellis Island first and Kathy was excited to see if her father had landed there. None of the records are kept on the Island anymore, and we had to sign into a website to see passenger records. We found several G.Szabo’s that arrived in 1957, but the information from there was too hard to look up on a phone. Even more interesting, Ellis Island shut down in 1954, so, George did not land there. The audio tour of the Island was really good, even Mia liked it. I think we will count this as her history lesson for the week. We then caught the ferry to the Statue of Liberty, which also came with a free audio tour. The statues real name is “Liberty Enlightening the World”. There is a museum, and a path around the statue, where you learn all about the statue and the island it is on. The statue and the views of the city were amazing. After the ferry ride back to Jersey, Mia and Kathy went to the playground in Liberty Park, while I walked “home” to make dinner and walk Oreo. Our feet are sore. We ended up walking 8.5 miles today.
Oct 8th
We are taking the subway into New York today. First, we had to walk less than a mile to the PATH (New Jersey subway) station, which took us under the Hudson to Manhattan (it was a 10 minute ride). From there we transferred to the NYC subway and headed Uptown. There are so many things to see and do, but we only have two more days here. We narrowed it down to our “must do’s”, and got off of the subway in Times Square. It was a little overwhelming at first. There is a lot to take in, the tall building with giant video screens flashing advertisements, all of the stores (Disney, Lego, Planet Hollywood, Etc, Etc), people trying to sell you tours, cars honking, people dressed up in costumes asking you to pay to take pictures with them, food vendors. What surprised me, was that there were not as many people as I expected. I didn’t feel uncomfortable. It being a weekday, and COVID probably had something to do with the lack of crowds. We spent a while walking around the square gawking at everything, and then started walking to Central Park. The police presence is huge. There is an NYCPD officer on almost every corner. On our way to Central Park, we walked down Broadway, passed Carnegie Hall, Rockefeller Center and Radio City Music Hall. A few blocks from the park, we passed Rays Original Pizza, and couldn’t resist getting a big slice of New York style pizza. When I was asked “For here or to go?”, and I said, “For here”, I was immediately asked to show proof of vaccination. Luckily, I had my card in my wallet. NYC requires that you show proof of vaccination in order to eat indoors. After what this city went through last year, everyone is taking it very seriously. The pizza slices were huge, and were everything I expected (thin crispy crust and delicious). We finally got to Central Park, and the first thing that we saw is all the horse carriages lined up waiting to take tourists through the park. Again, we were assailed by vendors trying to sell us tours. We opted to walk instead. All three of us had chosen things we wanted to see, and Mia’s choice was the Central Park Zoo. We meandered through the park, seeing all of the familiar sights from movies and TV shows, until we reached the zoo. The Park is enormous, and we barely saw any of it. The Zoo also asked for proof of vaccination. I had mine, but Kathy left hers at the trailer. They still let her in, but she was not allowed to enter any of the buildings or enclosed displays. There were employees at each building checking wrist bands. Mia was in Heaven. She loved the seals, penguins and the huge indoor aviary with hundreds of birds. The Zoo is also limiting the number of people allowed in, so there were no crowds. We eventually pulled Mia out of the zoo, and we exited Central Park on 5th Ave. There was a hotdog stand on the corner, and we had to get “a dog with the works”, because it was on the list of “must do’s”. It was covered in onions, relish slaw, mustard and ketchup, and it was delicious. We walked to Columbus Circle, then climb down into the depths of the city to catch the subway back downtown. At one point on the ride, an older man, who had been standing by the door next to me, got off the train and started yelling at the rest of the passengers and calling us profanities. ??? I think he was mad because we were all wearing masks and he wasn’t? A few people casually flipped him the bird, but no one seemed surprised. When we reached Jersey City and exited the subway station, we noticed a lot of police and Fire vehicles around the building. We walked along the docks back to our trailer, and there were more police on every street. Then we saw the three NYPD police boats and two Coast Guard boats at the harbor. Apparently, we had just missed the Vice President, who had been visiting New Jersey today. By the time we got “home” we had walked over 9 miles. We were beat.
Oct 9th
We are taking the ferry to NYC today. The Liberty Harbor Ferry is only a half mile from our trailer and the ferry only took fifteen minutes to deliver us to NYC. We were dropped off at the World Trade Center Mall. We walked past the new WTC 1, to the Ground Zero memorial. There are two holes in the ground where the two towers stood, with an infinite water feature flowing down into the holes as far as you can see. Both holes are lined with marble railings engraved with all of the victim’s names. There were flags and flowers on certain names, and we learned it would have been their birthdays today. Every day the city moves them to the other victim’s names who would have had birthdays on those days. It was a very sobering display, and brought back a flood of emotions. From there, we walked to Chinatown and along the way passed St. James church and City Hall. Chinatown is a lot less touristy. The streets were lined with vegetable and fish markets. We found a restaurant and ordered Dim Sum. Mia fell in love with the food, eating things she normally wouldn’t have. We were exhausted from all of the walking the past few days, so we decided to call it a day. We walked to the nearest subway station to catch a train back to WTC. That didn’t work out so well. The train we needed wasn’t running today. We had to change plans and take a train all the way back Uptown, to change to a different train that could take us back Downtown. It took us a little longer, but we got where we needed to. At the WTC mall we found a creperie, and had some dessert. We had to wait for the next ferry back to New Jersey, but there was a playground next to the ferry terminal and Mia found some kids to play with. We finally made it back to our “home” exhausted from our three days in NYC. It has been great, but we need somewhere quiet to recuperate.
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